@TheTWF and Totenglocke, both of you have retarded arguments;
Sexist behavior should stay because stop whining and reasons,
But get rid of all that gay shit because its unrealistic and I don't like it.

Wish I'd seen this before I bought it. Sad!

Hopefully someone will make a mod to remove anything that doesn't line up with the traditional BG setting. Look at all the "mistakes" the mod community has had to fix in the past. Get to work guys.

"I don't have much patience with readers who yearn to explore incredible worlds and mind-bending situations but grow cold at the idea of imagining their way into different political ideas, different faiths, a different gender, a different skin, a different life."
-Joe Hill

I just...really wish some of you could take a step back for a second and hear how whiny, petty, and ridiculous you sound.

One forgettable character gets fleshed out and two memorable characters get some more background. The only reason anybody is mad is because an interview said these two minor, totally missable bits of writing had something to do with fighting sexism and some insecure people on the internet got "triggered" over nothing. If the expansion's writer hadn't gone a little militant feminist in that interview, nobody would have **** to say about Safana, Khalid, or Jaheira.

Well GOG has a 30 day refund policy.

I am really not sure what to do. On the one hand, I'm curious about the Enhanced Editions of these games and about the new Siege expansion. On the other, Amber Scott's statements are really bothering me and giving me pause before spending any money on Beamdog's offering.

The problems I have are:
1. Baldur's Gate is regarded as one of the best narrative driven games ever made. For a company to come along after this much time and decide that they can improve the story is arrogant to say the least.

2. I haven't read *all* the D&D source material, novels, etc. but I do NOT *ever* remember coming across homosexuals, transexuals, etc. Sexism, homophobia, transgender issues, etc. have NEVER existed in this world. That Beamdog has decided to include them isn't a problem because "Hurr, Durr, no homo", it's a problem because they are, unilaterally, messing with the source material. They are taking it upon themselves to inject their own wants and politics into a universe that has existed for a long time without them. This doesn't necessarily mean that their additions wouldn't be an improvement, but it does mean that it is going to look very jarring to anybody with any experience in the setting. If they want to create a world that behaves as they believe it should, they should make their own.

I honestly can't remember any time in D&D where sexuality or gender has ever made a difference. Not to say that it never has, simply that I've never noticed it.

3. Amber Scott saying that she wrote " a little tender, romance-y side quest for Khalid and Jaheira" is a bit concerning. Again, she seems to be arrogant enough to think that she can create a quest where we "learn a little bit about how their marriage works and how they really feel about each other". Uh .... we had that in the first game. How can a character like Jaheira, who was characterized as being a bit over-bearing, suddenly become "romance-y" for a little side-story, then go back to being over-bearing? This reeks of wrecking an existing character simply to satisfy the "Hey! We're ADULTS and we're progressive!" want of the writer/company.

I don't know if I'm going to buy these or not. I don't like people tampering with past works because I do not believe that history should be "brought up to date". Revisionism isn't something that should be rewarded.

Except that they didn't create a unique game series and lore to explore that stuff (they said in the linked interview that it's "too much effort" to be original) and instead decided to cram modern day political bullshit into a 20 year old game that takes place in a pre-established medieval fantasy world. That's why I don't care about that stuff being in Dragon Age or Mass Effect, because those are unique IPs that had that stuff from the start, not someone with an agenda shoehorning it in. Hell, go on YouTube and look up the SoD part where you meet the tranny - it literally has NOTHING to do with the plot and exists purely to say "We're so trendy for putting a tranny in our game!". There's nothing "petty" about expecting consistency within the game world, just as there's nothing petty with people being upset if a new author takes over an existing book series and decides to drastically change an existing character.
I'd have rolled my eyes and been a little annoyed at the forced "diversity" that doesn't fit the game, but you're right - if the author hadn't given an interview where they went full feminazi and made absurd claims of rampant sexism in the original game, I'd have bought this expansion as I'd been looking forward to it. Unfortunately for Beamdog, I have a strict policy against financially supporting a company that spews hatred for their customers and I have returned / refunded games for it in the past after learning about such behavior from employees before the return period was up. It's patently absurd that, generally speaking, with gaming / gaming "journalism" companies can get away with blatantly insulting their customers where any other industry that did that would see massive backlash.

To be fair, I think what he's talking about in that statement is the way games set in new and original universes tend to beat the player over the head with lore dumps in a way that can be a little overwhelming (it took me a few hours to warm up on Pillars' lore myself), while the a game set in the Forgotten Realms doesn't have to do that as much since it's already been established in so much other stuff and you can focus on the story itself instead of having to inject constant world-building.

As for the actual topic of this thread... not really an issue for me. I think romances of all stripes in RPGs are usually corny and bad, but I don't have to engage with them if I don't want to -- and I usually don't. How does it ruin your experience if there happens to be a gay character in the game? Certainly, I can think of some RPGs where the more "progressive" elements come off as clumsy tokenism, but that's a writing problem. I don't care about the "Evil SJW agenda forcing the horrific notion that women and non-straight people play video games and might want to relate to them" so much as I care about interesting characters and good writing in my RPGs. I dunno if Siege of Dragonspear is that game, but I guess I'll find out soon enough.

You get it, 100%. It's not a matter of the "themes", it's a matter of them not existing in D&D / Baldur's Gate lore and being forced in as well as trying to ret-con an existing character who was written 20 years ago by much more talented individuals. It would be like someone deciding to make an "enhanced edition" of Lord of the Rings and add in a new chapter focused on Merry and Pippin being gay lovers and removing their constant bickering and replacing it with "gag due to too much sugar" overly sweet lovey-dovey interactions. If you want to write a story / make a game focused on those themes, make a new one. If you do it well, people will buy it - but don't try to shove them into an existing franchise in order to try to get unsuspecting fans to pay and then sucker-punch them with something drastically different.

It sounds more like you have a strict policy of making a big stink about nothing for the sake of attention and getting to be self righteous on the internet, but if you want to bring politics into video game buying it's your money. You sound just like an overzealous social justice warrior though. : \

Enjoy being angry I guess. I'm going to go play Baldur's Gate; there's a new expansion out for it!

Part of the reason gay characters may seem 'out of place' is simply because they have been ignored in most media for a long time. D&D has its roots in Tolkien-ish, high fantasy (I think!), and the closest we got to a gay character there was bunch of hobbits playing touch in the shrubs.

Honestly, there's few things more camp than a bard prancing around with a lute, casting Faerie Lights and talking to animals; so I don't feel there's a strong argument for not having gay characters running around in D&D.

Just having gay NPCs does not make a game political either... unless the character is badly written, like "Hello! I am a blacksmith! By the way, I am a raging homosexual! Don't vote for Evil Lord Tonald Drump!"

I'm still roflmao with this US trumpists that don't give a moral damn for a game that promotes nonhuman race extermination (Xvarts, Orcs, Drows...) but are furious when there's some gay guy appearing !
They should fap more oftne (along with their counterparts in other religions) ...

And well, you can just exterminate gays as well in the game, Mr Totenkopf !

But they haven't done that. They have not (as far as anyone has indicated) changed or tried to improve the story of the original game in any way, or engage in any sort of retconning. The story of Baldur's Gate is still there, unblemished, as glorious as it was in 1998. What's they've done is write new stuff.

Those are two very different statements, though. Even if no LGBT characters had been portrayed in general D&D material or the Forgotten Realms setting (which may, I'm not sure, have been true in 1998-2000, though it certainly isn't true now), that is a far cry from saying that such people were canonically nonexistent. Think of all the works of fiction set in the real world that do not have any such characters; that doesn't mean LGBT people do not exist, or did not exist in e.g. Victorian London.

Besides, think of the trouble TSR got into in the 1980s with American Christian fundamentalists who complained about it promoting witchcraft, devil-worship and all that codswallop (which, incidentally, is why 2nd Edition has baatezu and tanar'ri rather than "devils" and "demons") - do you think at the time they'd have dared wave a red rag at that bull by portraying explicitly gay characters and letting themselves be accused of turning America's children gay?

As for sexism, D&D books have been constantly trying to address that, to changing degrees and in changing ways, since at least as far back as 2nd Edition, whose Player's Handbook, for example, has right at the beginning a (very brief) note on its stylistic choice to use the male pronoun and a statement that they don't want to exclude women. And, as I have already mentioned, note the statement that has always been present in the Baldur's Gate character creation screens: "Females of the Realms can excel in any area they wish, and are easily the equal of their male counterparts in every skill or respect." That is an explicit statement of anti-sexism for the game and the setting that has been there all the time.

Anyway, as I said, whether or not what you say about "the D&D source material" was true in 1998, it definitely isn't now. The current edition rules explicitly endorse gender and sexuality diversity for characters, and Ed Greenwood, creator of the Forgotten Realms, has stated that LGBT people exist and are accepted in the Realms.

No they're not and no it hasn't. That is merely your headcanon. See above.

There is, however, something exceedingly petty about complaining about such "inconsistency" where none exists.

"Spews hatred"? Seriously? If you actually think that what Beamdog has done here amounts to spewing hatred for their customers then your attitude is unbelievably infantile. Grow up.